How To Change Your Social Media To Succeed In 2017

Social media isn’t going away any time soonnot that any of my smart readers would believe that!

Rather social media provides multi-directional communications specifically one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many. It’s how we connect and communicate with the people we care about.

While Bryan Kramer calls this human-to-human interaction, I prefer the term “person-to-person”. It has an emotional, personal component that we learned to engage in as children.

Although many social networks persist in referring to participants as users, we must accept that they aren’t numbers to collect but rather real people with lives beyond our social media and marketing needs.

As social media evolves and extends its functionality, it’s integrated into other areas of our lives.

But it’s more—Social media can’t be siloed in the marketing department any more. Integrate it across your business. Be prepared to provide quality content your audience needs at every step of the buyer journey.

Social media is experiencing a transformation. In part, it’s attributable to the maturing of the major platforms.

As a result, content marketing and customer experience (including customer service and sales) are evolving in ways that can enable you to be the best option for your customer.

To succeed in this social media phase, provide an immersive experience to make your audience feel special.

Have a documented content distribution strategy. Since you may have different audiences on different platforms, plan your content reuse in advance.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

Go beyond sharing your latest information a few times.Mitch Joel publishes on different platforms to appeal to different audiences. including Facebook Notes, Medium, LinkedIn Publishing and others. (Note: Take care since this may create duplicate content.)

Maximize the impact of your top performing pages on your blog or website. Orbit Media’s Andy Crestodina recommends: including a call-to-action (CTA), testimonial, links to your strongest content, remove links to other people’s sites and polished video on your top pages. (Crestodina walks you through how to set up Google Analytics with videos.)

3. Build your community with personal relationships

Think personal relationships.

Bob Bly and Mari Smith made the point of addressing your audience by their first name. If you don’t know their name, use the second person (aka: you). This pulls readers into your content since they feel like you’re addressing them personally.

Build your tribe, both on social media and in real life. Yes it sounds old but it’s true. You have to be where your people are. (BTW, this is a major reason many people attended SMMW17. They get out from behind their computers and engage with their peeps.)

Influencer marketing continues to be a strong element of social media led by Top Rank’s Lee Odden. (Here’s a fuller analysis of influencer relations marketing.) But remember influencer marketing starts by paying-it-forward.

In my opinion, think beyond the top experts in your field. Instead look at your micro-influencers who love your brand and your business. This pyramid approach is helpful.

Promoters

Employees and content creators

Readers, customers and social media followers

Be where your squad is. For example, Jeff Bullas, an Australian social media expert, was at SMMW17 as a regular attendee.

Remember your business can’t survive on just influencers. You need to build relationships your audience.

Peter Shankman put it succinctly: “As you grow your business, don’t forget to grow your personal connections, as well. … Make sure you take care of them and, in return, they’ll take care of you.”

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

Build your email list from the first day. Don’t wait! Then deliver non-promotional content on a regular basis.

Connect with people you meet in real life on social media. Both Mike Alton and Ana Hoffman used Facebook Notes to give a personal shout out to the people they met and interacted with at SMMW17.How To Reach Out To Your Peeps After An Event – Ana Hoffman

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You will leave with all the materials you need to take a content marketing strategy back to your team – and – to implement a content marketing plan that will grow your business and inspire your audience.